Milton Wolf, former ambassador, dead at 80

SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio (AP) -- Former Ambassador Milton A. Wolf, who helped host the Carter-Brezhnev SALT II summit in Vienna, died Thursday of complications from lymphoma at his suburban Cleveland home. He was 80.
Wolf, prominent in Democratic fundraising circles and Jewish philanthropy, served as U.S. ambassador to Austria from 1977 to 1980. He hosted the 1979 arms limitation talks in Vienna where President Jimmy Carter and Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev signed the SALT II treaty.
A longtime fundraiser in Democratic politics, Wolf worked on Carter's 1976 campaign and served on the Carter inauguration committee.
He accepted the envoy's job, in part, because of Vienna's role as a transit point for Jewish emigrants from the Soviet Union.
He served from 1992 to 1995 as president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which provides overseas relief aid.
Trained as an economist, Wolf was chairman of the Milton A. Wolf Investors private investment firm and previously was president of Zehman-Wolf Construction Co., both of Cleveland.
His wife, Rosalyn Zehman Wolf, died in 2001. He is survived by a son, Leslie Eric Wolf of Beachwood, daughters Nancy Wolf of Pepper Pike, Sherri Wolf of New York City and Caryn Wolf Wechsler of Bethesda, Md., and five grandchildren.
The funeral is scheduled for Sunday at the Park Synagogue in Cleveland Heights.